Canada’s six biggest banks set aside $15.2 billion for bonuses in a “polarizing” year likely to bring joy to investment bankers and a little less cheer for traders and analysts.
The companies lifted variable-compensation pools by 6.5 per cent from last year, down from the jump of almost 11 per cent in 2017 but a bigger increase than in the previous two years, according to financial disclosures for the fiscal year. Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce and Royal Bank of Canada had the biggest gains in performance-based pay, while Bank of Nova Scotia had the smallest, the filings show.
“This year is going to be a polarizing one, where some firms pay well and others do not,” said Bill Vlaad, president of Vlaad & Co., a Bay Street recruitment firm that monitors compensation trends. “Firms that managed to not have large hiccups outside of Canada in 2018 should lead the way in bonuses.”
Canada’s lenders pay bonuses based on performance, with most of the variable compensation going to capital-markets employees such as investment bankers, research analysts and those in sales and trading. Variable compensation reflects the amount reserved, not paid out, and doesn’t include base salaries. Bonuses are typically distributed in December.
This year’s gain comes as banks posted a record $25.4 billion of revenue from their capital-markets operations for the fiscal year ended Oct. 31, with $4.88 billion gleaned from investment-banking fees and record trading revenue of $10.9 billion.
“The winners this year are investment bankers,” Vlaad said. “The losers continue to be those in sales, trading and research as changing regulations and technologies make their business more and more challenging to be profitable.”
Those in investment banking at most firms should see a 15 per cent to 20 per cent bump in their bonuses, extending a trend of higher payouts during the previous three years, according to Vlaad & Co. Those in sales, trading and research may see bonuses shrink by an equal amount, deepening a three-year downward trajectory for those employees.
Collective annual profit at Canada’s six biggest banks rose 7.4 per cent to a record $45.5 billion for the fiscal year. While that may help bring decent bonuses, shareholders haven’t been so lucky, with the eight-company S&P/TSX Commercial Banks Index falling 5.7 per cent this year along with flagging global markets.
Royal Bank
Royal Bank, which has the biggest capital-markets operations among Canada’s lenders, set aside $5.6 billion for variable compensation, up 7.6 per cent from a year ago and the highest amount of any of the companies. That represents a decline from 2017, when bonuses jumped 13.5 per cent. The bigger pool comes as the Toronto-based bank added 3,660 employees this year, including more than 110 senior investment bankers in the U.S. and Europe for its RBC Capital Markets division.
“It’ll be a good year,” chief financial officer Rod Bolger said in a Nov. 28 phone interview. “Where bankers have done well, and have done it from a good risk perspective and conduct perspective, they’ll be rewarded.”
Toronto-Dominion
Toronto-Dominion Bank, the country’s largest lender by assets, set aside $2.59 billion for incentive compensation, up 5.6 per cent but less than half of last year’s increase.
Bonuses “are quite driven by revenue performance in the wholesale bank, and in aggregate the bank did so much better, so I expect they’ll be up slightly,” CFO Riaz Ahmed said in a phone interview, adding that the lender also added employees, which is reflected in the increase.
Scotiabank
Scotiabank, Canada’s third-largest lender, said performance-based compensation rose 1.6 per cent to $1.62 billion, less than half of last year’s 4 per cent increase. The gain comes in a year when Scotiabank made acquisitions at home and abroad, swelling its employee ranks, while exiting other countries and businesses and scaling back its metals-trading business. Capital-markets revenue at the Toronto-based bank declined 2.1 per cent this year as investment-banking fees slid.
The company declined to comment on bonus payouts.
Bank of Montreal
Bank of Montreal lifted its performance-based compensation 5.2 per cent to $2.51 billion, an increase slightly higher than last year’s. As at Scotiabank, revenue at Bank of Montreal’s BMO Capital Markets division fell, with the 4.7 per cent decline coinciding with a drop in trading and investment-banking fees.
“We had a good year from an income-growth perspective and, with that, some of the performance-compensation numbers will be up,” CFO Tom Flynn said in a Dec. 4 phone interview. The bank also added employees through hiring and the acquisition of New York-based broker-dealer KGS-Alpha Capital Markets. “We’ve got a bigger pool of people who are being paid out of that bucket of money as well, and that’s contributing to some of the growth.”
CIBC
CIBC boosted its performance-based pay by 13 per cent to $1.97 billion, its second straight year of double-digit increases. The gain comes as the Toronto-based lender expanded further in the U.S. with its June 2017 takeover of Chicago-based PrivateBank.
“We had good performance, so compensation will be in line with that,” CFO Kevin Glass said in a Nov. 29 phone interview. “The big jump you see is more year over year as a result of PrivateBank and the fact that we’ve been with them for a full year.”
National Bank
National Bank set aside $941 million for variable compensation, up 2.8 per cent. Last year, the increase was 17 per cent. The Montreal-based company’s National Bank Financial division outperformed larger rivals in gains from capital markets, with revenue rising 7.7 per cent. The firm was the only one among its peers with a gain in investment-banking fees, and also had the biggest jump in trading, with a 14 per cent increase.
The bank declined to comment on its bonus payouts.
NOTE: Kennedy dissects the research methodology used by Merck. The subject matter is important, but difficult. Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.—“Many of the things I’m going to say today would be slanderous if they weren’t true. And, if they are not true, then Merck should sue me. But Merck won’t do that. And they won’t do that because in the United States, truth is an absolute defense against slander.”
This must-watch video details the many problems with the development and safety of Merck’s third-highest grossing product, Gardasil. Children’s Health Defense (CHD) and Robert F. Kennedy, Jr., CHD’s Chairman and Chief Legal Counsel, ask that you watch and share this video so that you, and others, may make an informed decision of whether or not to give your child, boy or girl, a Gardasil vaccine. It can also be a useful tool for pediatricians who are trying to understand how this vaccine, that is actually causing health problems with young people, could have been approved by FDA and then recommended by CDC. The video is full of jaw-dropping facts about Gardasil and the clinical trials leading up to its release upon an unsuspecting public.
Children’s Health Defense and Robert F. Kennedy Jr.—Science Day Presentation for Gardasil
Hi, I’m Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and I’m making this video for the sake of parents who are trying to make an informed decision of whether or not to give their child, their boy or girl the Gardasil vaccine.
I’m also making this video as a tool for pediatricians who are trying to understand how this vaccine—if it’s actually causing all of these problems with young girls—could have been approved by FDA and then mandated by CDC.
Virtually all of the things that I’m going to talk about in this video are available to the public on public documents as I’m going to show.
Finally, I want to say this about Merck which is the company that makes the Gardasil vaccine.
Many of the things that I’m going to say today would be slanderous if they were not true. And if they’re not true then Merck should sue me. But Merck won’t do that and they won’t do it because in the United States truth is an absolute defense to slander. And second of all Merck knows that if they sue me, I’m going to immediately file a discovery request, and many, many, more documents are going to emerge that illustrate even more fraud by this company on the American public and the people all over the world.
Finally, as a footnote I’m not going to talk today about the specific biological mechanisms that allow this vaccine to cause harm in human beings. That information is out there it’s in dozens of peer-reviewed, published scientific documents. Many of these are described on our website and I urge people to go to the Children’s Health Defense website to educate themselves on those issues.
Today we’re going to talk about the clinical trial about Merck’s fraud in that process…and this is Merck’s claim:
The HPV vaccine will “eliminate cervical cancers and other HPV associated cancers.”
The danger of dying from HPV cancer in this country is 1 death in 43.5 thousand people.
Imagine you have a deck of cards but instead of 50 cards. There’s 43,500 on a on a big, big table and one of those cards is a black card. If you get that, you die.
So, Merck’s deal is that it’s going to remove that black card from the deck. But in order to play the game and make sure that Merck removes the black card, everybody who participates has to put in $420 because that’s the cost of the three-dose Gardasil vaccine.
So, here’s Gardasil by the numbers. So, the cost of the three-jab series average is about $420. There are 76 million children who essentially have been mandated by CDC to receive these vaccines. A blockbuster product from Merck, and global revenues from this vaccine today are about $2.3 billion dollars. It’s the third largest product in the company’s inventory.
The cost of saving one American life is 18.3 million dollars. People could argue whether or not that’s a reasonable value of a human life. What I would say was is that the criteria that we should use for evaluating reasonableness—is there a cheaper way to save more lives? And people would argue that Pap smears are the most effective way that 80 percent of cervical cancer deaths have already been eliminated by Pap smears. And this is the most effective technology.
Incidentally in another context HHS has already put a value on human life and the value is $250k. That is the maximum number that the vaccine compensation program will pay for killing an American citizen.
Prior to marketing the vaccine, the FDA licenses the vaccine, and in that licensing process Merck had to show that the vaccine was safe. According to Federal regulations the word “safety” means “relative freedom from harmful effects, taking into consideration the character of the product in relationship to the condition of the recipient at that time.”
So, what is the condition of the recipients of that target group for this vaccine. And this vaccine targets millions of preteens and teens, for whom the risk of dying from cervical cancer is practically zero. Cervical cancer’s median age of death is 58. It is first diagnosed at age 50 (median).
A teenage girl or boy has zero chance of dying of this illness. Which means the threshold for giving this medication is very, very high.
Secondly it is mandated in some jurisdictions So the government is actually—government officials are actually—coming in and ordering people to take this medical intervention. So, we have to be sure that the threshold for risk, “the risk profile” for that medical intervention should be very, very low.
Third, unlike other medical interventions Gardasil recipients are perfectly healthy. So, when you give medication to a healthy individual you have to make sure that the risk profile is practically zero. And in order to determine risk, there is a standardized protocol. And it’s called double-blind placebo studies. What does that mean?
It means that the drug company that’s trying to license this product gives the medication to one group of people, maybe 5,000 or 10,000 people, and gives a placebo, an inert placebo, either an identical looking pill that is inert—it’s either saline or sugar—to a similarly situated group of 5,000 or 10,000 people and it’s double blind meaning that neither the patients nor the researchers knew who got the placebo and who got the actual medication.
And you can see here, here’s what the NIH says about the National Institute for Health placebos: an inactive substance that looks like a drug.
So here are typical examples:
Lipitor was given during its study phase to about 17k subjects. Half of them received Lipitor half of them received a sugar pill that looked identical to Lipitor and they were observed and studied for up to 3.3 years.
Why for so long? Because many of the injuries that are caused by medication are latent—they don’t show up for two or three or four or five years cancer for example may not show up for four or five years after the exposure. Autoimmune diseases and allergies and these kind of things take a long time to diagnose. Enbrel for that reason was delayed for 6.6 years and against a control group that received a saline injection.
Botox, there was a national emergency to get Botox to market so people could get their wrinkles cured, was studied for 51 weeks and it was studied against a saline injection.
Now I’m going to show you one of the really outrageous frauds that Merck committed during the clinical trials. This is an insert that is part of every vaccine package. And you can go on the Internet right now and look up that Merck product and search and find these two tables.
In the initial table you can see a there are three columns and this is a table that just looks at injuries at the vaccine site for redness and itching and bruising and pain at the vaccine site and they use one…there were 5,000 girls—5,088 girls who got the Gardasil vaccine.
Number two, there were 3,470 girls who got the AAHS control, what is that? That is the adjuvant in the vaccine. That is a toxic neurotoxin, that’s put in the vaccine to make it more long-lasting to provoke an immune response in the subject of the vaccine.
And most people believe that it is that aluminum adjuvant that is causing all of these injuries in the girls who are getting the vaccine. And there were 3,470 people who received just the neurotoxin with no antigens and no other vaccine components.
And you have a third group which is the placebo group. What I want you to look at is at these numbers. That in the Gardasil and AAHS control there is virtually the same number of injuries.
And when you get to the saline placebo, that injury rate is cut in half.
Now let’s go to the table where they talk about real systemic injuries…autoimmune diseases, and instead of showing us real science, which is to show us what happened to the saline group, they hide the saline group as a way of fooling you, your pediatrician and the regulatory agency by compressing it into the aluminum group and they never tell us. They say this is a combination of the aluminum adjuvant and the saline placebo. They don’t tell us how many in each category were compressed there. The real thing that you need to watch here is what happened.
These are all very, very serious injuries. These are injuries that in some cases people would feel were worse than death—and that affect people and debilitate for a lifetime in many cases.
And if you look at the bottom of the Gardasil group an astonishing 2.3 percent of the girls in the clinical study who received the Gardasil vaccine got ill from autoimmune diseases, many within seven months of taking the vaccine.
And look what happened in the aluminum group—the same number exactly. 2.3 percent.
Nobody, no parent would allow their daughter to take a substance that had a one-in-40 chance of giving them a lifetime disability.
World Health Organization says that using a spiked placebo, or a faux-cebo as Merck did with Gardasil, puts you at a methodological disadvantage that “it may be difficult or impossible to assess vaccine safety.”
Dr. Stanley Plotkin, who developed the polio vaccine…who developed the pertussis vaccine, who developed the rotavirus vaccine—the Stanley Plotkin award is the Nobel Prize of vaccinology it’s given to the top vaccinologist every year—and what he says is:
Unless you have a true control group you are in LA LA LAND.
Finally, the American Medical Association says the absence of double-blind placebo testing and short-term studies of chronic disease are “the indicia of marketing masquerading as science.”
And that’s what Merck gave us.
The Cochrane Collaboration—thirty thousand scientists from all over the world who came together to create an independent assessment of medical protocols which they saw as being increasingly controlled by the industry—The Cochrane Collaboration said the use of active comparators probably increased the occurrence of harms and the comparative group thereby masking harms created by the HPV vaccine.
And that indeed was Merck’s point…to hide those harms.
So, if you do the math women are 100 times more likely to suffer serious adverse events from the Gardasil vaccine than they are to be protected from cervical cancer.
So now we have a very different bargain in this card game that we’re playing with Merck.
If 43 thousand cards and the black card—the death card is gone—but now, there are a thousand blue cards which if you pick one of those by mistake you have a good chance of getting an autoimmune disease. Nobody would take that bargain.
So, in order to get the FDA license to market this vaccine Merck did a number of studies, which are called protocols. We don’t know how many they did because they’re not telling us they never disclosed it.
The one we’re most concerned with is protocol 18. The reason protocol 18 is critical is because that was the basis for FDA giving Merck the license to produce and market the vaccine.
Why is that? Because protocol 18 is the only one in which the target audience for this vaccine. 11- and 12-year old girls was actually tested, and had a control group. The other ones looked at big cohorts of women were 16 to 25-year old and 16 to 26-year old women.
Protocol 18 looked at girls and boys from ages 9 to 15. It was a total of 1200 children. and almost 600 controls. That is a very, very, tiny group of people to study in order to determine the safety of a product is going to be marketed to billions of children around the world.
Now I’m going to show you one of the key fraudulent flimflams that Merck used to get this license. FDA said they approved Gardasil based on protocol 18 because protocol 18 was of particular interest because it’s the only protocol in which Merck used a true saline placebo instead of the aluminum adjuvant as a control.
That’s what Merck told FDA and the CDC but Merck was lying. It actually did not use a true saline placebo. It used what Merck called the “carrier solution.” Which is all of the components of the vaccine except for the aluminum and the viral particles the antigen.
Among the compounds that we know were in the carrier solution are Polysorbate 80 which we have no idea what the safety profile is because it’s never been tested for safety independently in vaccines. Sodium borate which is borax which is banned by FDA in food products and all food products in the United States, and is banned altogether in Europe, genetically modified yeast, (there’s no safety test ever been done on it in vaccines) L-histidine, the same, and possibly DNA fragments.
I say possibly because we know there are DNA fragments in the final vaccine, we don’t know how they got there. And Merck has lied about the DNA fragments from the outset.
And despite these potentially toxic components of compounds that are in the vaccine, the 596 children that were given the carrier solution fared much better in the other than any other cohort in the study. The girls and boys who receive the carrier solution were the only significant cohorts with no serious adverse events for the first 15 days.
And here’s another one of the gravamen of the fraud that Merck committed in its Gardasil trials, but it turns out in the protocol 18 study, it appears Merck cut the amount of aluminum that was given to the vaccine group in half. They tested a completely different formulation. If true, we theorize that they took the aluminum out to reduce the number of injuries and to mask the really bad safety profile of this vaccine.
And since the protocol 18 data are not based on the Gardasil vaccine formulation, the trial itself constitutes rank scientific fraud.
Here’s another bag of tricks that was used by Merck in order to skew the clinical trials results in favor of Gardasil.
Merck and its researchers use what they call exclusion criteria—for example people who had zero allergies, people who had prior genital infections were thrown out of the clinical trials. People who had over four sex partners in their entire lives were excluded from the trials. Anybody who had a history of immunological or nervous system disorders, people with chronic illnesses and seizure disorders, people with other medical conditions, people who had reactions to vaccine ingredients including the aluminum, yeast and the benzonase. or anybody with a history of alcohol and drug abuse.
If you really wanted to know whether the vaccine was helping people—if it was effective—wouldn’t you want those people in your study wouldn’t you want people who had a genetic vulnerability to cancer in your study to see if it actually was capable of preventing cancer.
Then Merck had one catch all exclusion category which was any condition which in the opinion of the investigator might interfere with the evaluation of the study objectives. Well, that gave Merck and its paid investigators complete control to throw people out of the study who they thought might make the study look not successful. All of these exclusionary categories gave Merck the ability to limit the study to people who were like All of these exclusionary categories gave Merck the ability to limit this study to people who were like an elite club of superheroes…the people who get the vaccine are not the same people they tested on. They tested it on the Avengers. They didn’t test it on, you know, Joe Bag-of-Donuts … the people are actually receiving this vaccine in day to day life. And by doing that they were able to mask whatever injury might show up in a larger and more vulnerable population who are actually receiving the vaccine.
Experts used an arsenal of sloppy protocols to again, hide vaccine injuries. Among these, Merck gave report cards—the daily journal report cards— only to 10 percent of the people who they tested the vaccine on and told those people only make reports for 14 days after the injection. And the report cards were only designed to collect jab site information. So, redness, itching, bruising, fever.
And they ignored altogether the autoimmune diseases and menstrual cycle problems and fertility problems and pain and dizziness and seizures and all of the other things that we’ve now seen are associated with the vaccine. In fact, there are numerous girls who report that they were injured that they attempted to report those injuries to Merck, and that Merck rebuffed them.
Furthermore, Merck gave extraordinary discretion to its researchers to determine what was a vaccine injury in what was not a vaccine injury and because there was no inert placebo, it was completely within their discretion. If a girl came back with seizures or autoimmune disease or menstrual cycle problems they could just say to the girl, well that’s not related to the vaccine.
In some cases, we know that Merck actively covered up and lied about injuries that it had a duty to report to the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. For example, in the case of Christina Tarsell, a Maryland girl, who died from the Gardasil vaccine, Merck lied about that death in its official reports of the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. It told the system that Christina’s doctor had told Merck that her death was the result of a virus.
And the doctor adamantly denies that. Merck has refused to remove the misinformation from the VAERS system.
Furthermore, Merck lied to the girls who participated in these studies, telling them No.1, that the placebo was saline and that it contained no other ingredients. And No. 2, that the study in which they were participating was not a safety study. They were told that there had already been safety studies and that the vaccine had been proven safe.
What did this do for Merck? It made it so the girls were less likely to report injuries associated with the vaccine. Because they believed that the vaccine that they were receiving had already been proven safe and that any injuries they did experience maybe a month or two months or three months after the vaccine must be simply coincidental and had nothing to do with the vaccine.
Despite all of these efforts by Merck to discourage those from reporting vaccine injuries during the clinical trials, half of the girls in the Gardasil group and half of them in the aluminum adjuvant group reported serious injuries after receiving the vaccine.
In order to conceal the link between these injuries and the vaccine, Merck invented a brand new medical metric that had never been heard of before called “new medical conditions” and it dismissed all of these new injuries which affected 50 percent of the girls who received the vaccine and the adjuvant as “new medical conditions”, unrelated to the vaccines, simply sad coincidences.
Many of these diseases were serious diseases—blood lymphatic diseases, anemia, endocrine diseases, autoimmune diseases, G.I., Crohn’s disease, ulcerative colitis, vaginal infections musculoskeletal injuries, arthritis, neoplasm, Hodgkin’s disease, neurological diseases, psychiatric diseases, depression, reproductive and breast disorders, menstrual irregularities, and pain. Over 3 percent of the girls—1 in 30—in both groups required surgical and medical procedures.
So, this card game that we’re playing with Merck has now become a really bad bet.
Merck has removed the one black card but you now have a 1 in 40 chance of drawing a blue card and getting an autoimmune disease that may afflict you for the rest of your life and you have a 1 in 2 chance of having some other serious medical condition.
So now let’s look at Merck’s central claim which is that the Gardasil vaccine will prevent cervical cancer.
Merck’s in a sweet position here, let’s face it because the target group vaccine is 11-year olds, and the median age of death for cervical cancer is age 58. Merck essentially is making this bargain.
It’s telling the 11-year old girl if you take our vaccine 47 years from now you won’t die of cervical cancer. And of course, that truth is you can’t make a vaccine that proves that it’s going to prevent cancer 47 years from now. There’s no way to test for that.
So, Merck used a shortcut. It said we’re going to prove that it prevents these what it called surrogate end points. The best thing that Merck had come up with was CIN2 and CIN3 lesions which it called precancerous lesions even though most of those lesions never mature into cancer.
So how can you call something precancerous when it was never going to turn into cancer?
And here’s what a study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology said about Merck’s scheme: CIN3 is an imperfect diagnosis of precancer, and an intermediate surrogate for cancer.
Their own attorneys told them for these products, the indication is the surrogate, not the ultimate. Promotion cannot make any claim, vis-a-vis the ultimate end point, based upon the fate of a surrogate endpoint.
Merck has another problem. Recent peer reviewed scientific studies indicate that perhaps only a third of cervical cancer cases are even associated with the HPV vaccine. That would completely put the lie to Merck’s claims that Gardasil is going to eliminate cervical cancer altogether.
So now we have a really dubious deal because we need to put that black card back in the deck because now, we have doubts about whether or not this vaccine can prevent cervical cancer at all.
But the news gets worse. Gardasil may actually cause cancer. Gardasil’s insert states Gardasil has never been evaluated for potential to cause carcinogenicity or genotoxicity. And Gardasil’s ingredients include possible carcinogens including human DNA.
And look at this…This is Merck’s own pre-clinical trial records and those records show that girls or women, who already had HPV—had been exposed at some point in their life to it—actually had a negative efficacy of 44.6 percent.
What is negative efficacy? It means those girls had a 44.6 increased risk of getting those precancerous lesions. To make things even worse, there are recent scientific studies that suggest a phenomena of what is known as type replacement—some 200 different strands of HPV, some of them are more cancerous than others, and the current HPV vaccine goes after 9 of those 200 viral types. What these studies indicate is by eliminating those particular strains of the virus it opens up an ecological niche in the woman so that more lethal and virulent viruses can actually colonize that spot and dramatically increase the risk of cervical cancer.
So now Merck’s deal is looking really grim. Not only do we have a one-in-40 chance of getting an autoimmune disease and a 50 percent chance of getting some serious medical condition but now the cancer risk has been reinserted and actually amplified.
And now let’s look at some of the non-cancer injuries that Merck found in its preclinical studies.
The miscarriage rate in the preclinical studies after Gardasil doubled the background rate. The birth defects in the Gardasil group were five times the rate of birth defects from the control group. As to reproductive disorders an astonishing 10.9 percent of the women in the pool group reported reproductive disorders within seven months of receiving Gardasil compared to 1.2 percent in the placebo group. The death rate in the Gardasil group and the clinical trials was 8.5 per 10 thousand.
Death risk from this vaccine according to Merck’s own studies is 37 times the risk of dying from cervical cancer.
Oh, now look at the deal that Merck has offered us they’ve actually increased our risk of dying by 37 times.
So now let’s look at post-licensing surveillance. So, Merck can argue that we might have missed something in our pre-licensing studies but surely if there were any injuries being caused by this vaccine we would see them in post-licensing surveillance.
And the problem with that is that the post-licensing surveillance system, the principle one, is called the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System. The system is a voluntary system that simply does not work. It’s broken. In fact, in 2010 HHS hired another federal agency the agency for healthcare research quality and a group of Harvard researchers to study Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System and those researchers found fewer than 1 percent of adverse events of vaccines are ever reported.
But even under that system, Gardasil has distinguished itself as the most dangerous vaccine ever invented.
In fact, when you compare it to Menactra which is a meningitis vaccine that’s given to the same age group—teenagers—Gardasil had an 8.5 times more emergency room visits, 12.5 times more hospitalizations, 10 times more life-threatening events and 26.5 times more disabilities than Menactra.
The vaccine court which is within HHS has made awards for numerous deaths and very, very serious injuries from the Gardasil vaccine. So, HHS itself admits that this vaccine kills people and it’s given compensation to the families that were injured.
The same wave of serious injuries and deaths that have been seen in nations around the globe, when they adopt mandates for the Gardasil vaccine. Even Gardasil’s own insert, the package insert that the company provides, acknowledges that the injuries that can be caused by this vaccine include death, pancreatitis, fatigue, malaise, immune system disorders, autoimmune diseases, anaphylaxis, musculoskeletal and connective tissue disorders, nervous system disorders, acute disseminated encephalomyelitis, that’s brain injuries, Guillain-Barré syndrome, and other neuron diseases, paralysis, seizures, Transverse myelitis, and vascular disorders.
In Australia, in 2015, the Australian Department of Health Therapeutic Goods Administration reported that the adverse rates in girls is 17 times the incidental rate for cervical cancer throughout their lifespan. The country only looked at a handful of conditions including demyelinating disorders, complex regional pain syndrome and premature ovarian failure. There are many, many other injuries that included hospitalizations that were not subject to that study.
India suspended its Gardasil trials after numerous deaths and serious injuries.
A south Asian Journal of Cancer found that “a healthy 16-year old is at zero immediate risk of dying from cervical cancer but is faced with a small, but real risk of death or serious disability from a vaccine that has yet to prevent a single case of cervical cancer.”
Japan de-recommended Gardasil three months after it had added the vaccine to the immunization schedule. Japan’s health ministry discovered adverse events reported after Gardasil’s approval were many times higher than other vaccines on the recommended schedule—these included seizures severe headaches partial paralysis complex regional pain syndrome and an undeniable causal relationship between persistent pain and the vaccination.
Japanese researchers found that the adverse event rate for the HPV vaccine was as high as nine percent and that pregnant women injected with the vaccine aborted or miscarried 30 percent of their babies.
In 2015 the Japanese Association for Medical Sciences issued official guidelines for managing symptoms of injuries caused by the Gardasil vaccine and the association announced there was no proof that this vaccine even prevents cervical cancer.
Alarmingly Merck’s own studies indicate that the Gardasil vaccine may disproportionately impact Asian women. For example, in protocol 19 there were 8 deaths among 3800 women and 7 those were Asians. That was 87 percent for Asian women, while only 31 percent of study participants were Asian.
Denmark in 2015 announced the opening of five new HPV clinics to treat women who were injured by the Gardasil vaccine. The day that they announced that opening there were 1300 applicants for treatment in those clinics.
In Colombia in 2014 800 girls in the town Carmen de Bolivar were grievously injured by Gardasil vaccine. Protests erupted all over Columbia. The attorney general of Colombia ordered the National Health Service of that country to immediately begin treating girls who were injured by the Gardasil vaccine and 2017 Colombia’s highest Constitutional Court ruled that the HPV vaccine would no longer be considered mandatory in Colombia and ordered that girls who showed symptoms after receiving the vaccine be given appropriate medical care.
Pompilio Martinez, who now teaches at the National University of Colombia, described the HPV vaccine as “a crime against humanity.”
Recent studies have shown that in nations with robust HPV vaccination programs and heavily vaccinated populations—in the UK and Sweden and Australia—were actually seeing dramatic upticks rises in the rate of cervical cancer rather than the downtrends that Merck promised everybody.
Now I’m going to show you some of the reasons why your pediatrician is insisting despite all of this evidence that your daughter or son gets the HPV vaccine. And the reason is the pediatrician is getting his information from agencies that have compromised through financial entanglements with Merck.
This is what the FDA is telling the public about vaccine safety: it says that vaccines are regulated by FDA and undergo a rigorous review of laboratory and clinical data to ensure the safety efficacy and purity and potency of these products.
But this is a very different story the FDA is acknowledging in-house, (and this comes from a 2007 document—this is the year that Gardasil got its license from the FDA), FDA’s inability to keep up with scientific advances mean that American lives are at risk. FDA is evaluations and methods have remained largely unchanged over the last half century. The world looks to FDA as a leader today. Not only can the agency not lead, it cannot even keep up with the advances in science.
But, the most troubling problem at FDA is it has nothing to do with incompetence. It has to do with corruption. The panel within FDA that licenses new vaccines and anoints them as safe is called the Vaccine and Related Biological Products Advisory Committee, the acronym is VRBPAC. And in 2000 Congress investigated VRBPAC because of charges of corruption from outside the agency.
And here’s what the congressional committee found: the overwhelming majority of members, both voting members and consultants have substantial ties to the pharmaceutical industry.
Conflicts of interest rules employed by FDA have been weak enforcement has been lax. Committee members with substantial ties to pharmaceutical companies are given waivers to participate in committee proceedings. In many cases significant conflicts of interest are deemed to be in conflict at all.
And here are some specific examples of the conflict of the advisory committee that approves vaccines:
Three out of five FDA advisory committee members who voted to approve the rotavirus vaccine in December of 1997 had financial ties to the pharmaceutical companies that were developing different versions of the vaccine.
One of the five voting members had a 9 plus million dollar contract for a rotavirus vaccine.
One of the five voting members was the principal investigator for a Merck grant to develop the rotavirus vaccine.
One of the five voting members received approximately a million dollars from vaccine manufacturers toward vaccine development.
Once they get by FDA, vaccine companies then go to CDC, where another committee, which is called ACIP Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices, will then take that vaccine that FDA has licensed and they will put it on the recommended list which means it becomes essentially mandatory for 76 million American children.
A listing on CDC’s recommended list is the holy grail for vaccine companies. It means a bonanza of wealth for those companies. If ACIP votes to add your vaccine to the recommended list, it means:
mandating the vaccine to millions of American children, (half of those are paid for by the government);
Immunity from liability for the manufacturers so nobody can sue them no matter how dangerous that vaccine is, no matter how toxic its components no matter how grievous your injury, you cannot sue that vaccine manufacturer for damages liability;
Inclusion of the Vaccine for Children’s program which is a program that guarantees that half the vaccines that you manufacturer are going to be purchased by the CDC at full cost.
This means billions of dollars for companies that are fortunate enough to get their vaccines listed on this recommended list. It means that you’re going to sell 74 million vaccines to people who have no choice—you have no marketing cost you have no advertising cost, you have limited testing expenses, and you have no liability for injuries caused by your vaccine.
In 2006 and 2007 while Gardasil was getting its approvals, ACIP did not pretend to base its recommendations on scientific evidence. It only adopted evidence-based standards in 2011.
But what did it base its recommendation on? It turns out it was mainly just friendships and money. The conflicts at ACIP are as bad as the conflicts within the FDA.
This is from the same year—2000— investigation by Congress quote the CDC grants blanket waivers to ACIP members each year that allow them to deliberate on any subject regardless of their conflicts for the entire year. ACIP members are allowed to vote on vaccine recommendations even when they have financial ties to the drug companies related to similar vaccines.
The ACIP’s prolific use of working groups to track vaccine policy is outside the specter of public scrutiny, opens the door to special interest access. ACIP’s policy of allowing government employees to vote encourage the system where government officials make crucial decisions affecting American children without advice or consent of the governed.
Here is a typical committee panel that approved Merck’s rotavirus vaccine. The majority of ACIP’s members were conflicted and their most recent vote. Again, this is Congress’s words not mine.
The chairman served on Merck’s immunization Advisory Committee the same committee that approved Merck’s vaccine.
Another member who shares the patent on a vaccine underdeveloped for this same disease at $350,000 grant from Merck to develop this vaccine and was a consultant from Merck.
Another member was under contract with the Merck Vaccine Division.
Another member received salary from Merck and other payments.
Merck another member was participating in vaccine studies with Merck.
And another member received grants from Merck.
And unfortunately, that congressional investigation had virtually no impact on the way CDC does and continues to do business. For example, a 2009 report by the inspector general of HHS on the same conditions existed at CDC had systematic lack of oversight. Ninety seven percent of committee members’ conflict disclosures had omissions. 58 percent had at least one unidentified potential conflict. 32 percent of the committee members had at least one conflict remained unresolved and the CDC continues to grant waivers.
This shows that CDC is really just an arm of the vaccine industry it shouldn’t be regulating the industry. It’s part of it.
This is CDC’s entire budget $11.5 billion, and almost half of that almost 5 billion dollars goes to purchasing and promoting vaccines. And this little sliver here is the Immunization Safety Office.
That’s how much money, less than 1 percent of the total goes to vaccine safety.
Not only that but Merck exercises control over CDC through the CDC Foundation. Merck contributes millions of dollars every year to the CDC Foundation. The CDC Foundation has received six hundred and twenty million dollars from Merck and other pharmaceutical companies to pay for 824 programs at the CDC.
Merck representative sit on the CDC Foundation Board and control the agency activities.
This is what the British Medical Journal said about those conflicts:
“Most of us were shocked to learn that the CDC takes funding from the industry. It is outrageous that industry apparently is allowed to punish the CDC if the agency conducts research that has the potential to cut into profits.”
Corruption is systemic at FDA too shockingly 45 percent of FDA’s budget comes from the industry. Pharmaceutical companies pay billions of dollars in fees annually to FDA to fast track drugs. Between 2000-2010 pharmaceutical companies paid 3.4 billion dollars to FDA to get drug approvals, and those payments by industry have caused FDA and CDC to treat the vaccine makers not as a regulated entity but as partners and clients and friends.
According to Michael Carome, who is a former HHS employee “Instead of a regulator and regulated industry, we now have a partnership that relationship has tilted the FDA away from public health perspective to an industry friendly perspective. And that’s why your doctor does not know the truth about Gardasil.”
This is another thing your doctor probably doesn’t know. The government agency NIH actually developed the key component for the Gardasil vaccine and NIH owns part of the patent and receives royalties on it. Not only does NIH the agency receive millions and millions of dollars annually from the vaccine, but also the individual scientists who worked on the vaccine within the agency are entitled to make one hundred and fifty thousand dollars a year in royalty payments from Merck.
Oh, every time your pediatrician sells one of those four hundred and twenty dollar vaccines to your child or you, NIH scientists and HHS scientists and the agencies themselves are making money on that transaction. And that’s why your doctor doesn’t know what’s happening because he’s getting his information or her information from those agencies.
So, there are many, many, other shocking conflicts that I don’t have time to talk about today between Merck and the other regulated vaccine makers and the industry that’s supposed to be protecting the public from that regulated industry.
I just want to talk for a moment about one example. From 2002 to 2009 Julie Gerberding was the director of CDC and she oversaw all, all of this crooked science that went into the approvals in 2006 and 2007 of Merck’s Gardasil vaccine. She was rewarded by Merck.
When she left the agency in 2009, she was hired by Merck as the president of its vaccine division and Merck gave her a salary of 2.5 million dollars a year, and 38 million dollars in stock options. And that kind of dough buys a lot of loyalty from regulators.
They know what’s at the end of the line for them if they behave and if they do what Merck and the other company has asked them to do. And these are the reasons that your pediatrician, who’s giving your daughter that Gardasil vaccine believing that it may someday save her life doesn’t know about the risk and perils and the inefficacy that are attended to that vaccine cause that regulators from whom he’s getting or she’s getting her information have been corrupted by this company.
And most of you probably know this is a difficult issue for people like myself who are concerned with vaccine injuries to address, because the press will not cover these issues because there’s 5.4 billion dollars that go from these companies to advertising on TV and radio and newspapers and on the web every year and nobody wants to lose advertising revenue. And the Congress has been bought off the regulatory agencies have been captured and we can’t use the courts because you can’t sue a vaccine maker for injuring yourself or your child.
We’ve figured out ways around those laws and we’re going to sue Merck. And if you are Merck and you’re listening to this tape.
We’re going to come for you and we’re gonna get justice for these girls and these boys who you’ve injured because of your greed.
And if you’re a mother or a father who are listening to this, we’d like your support. It’s just the fact that the more monetary support the Children’s Health Defense has, the more of these cases that we can bring and we’re going to get justice. And we’re going to bring these cases, and sue companies like Merck until we get that justice. We want your money and we want your support and we want your membership.
But more than anything, we want you to protect your child on this vaccine and for other injuries and for that reason we made this tape. Not only so that you can be informed about the science and you can ask the questions of your pediatrician or you can give him a copy of this tape and ask him to watch it and respond to it.
And if you’re a pediatrician I would ask you to actually look at the science and not resort to appeals to authority because, to say “well I know it’s safe because CDC says it’s safe”, or WHO says it’s safe or the AAP says it’s safe because all of those agencies and organizations have been corrupted by pharmaceutical industry money. You need to actually look at the science.
And you need to read the science critically and if you do that, you’ll find that the things that I’ve talked about in this tape are real. That these injuries are real and that we have got to save our children from this cataclysm.
I want to thank you for listening to this video and urge you to join Children’s Health Defense.
Sign up for free news and updates from Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and the Children’s Health Defense. CHD is planning many strategies, including legal, in an effort to defend the health of our children and obtain justice for those already injured. Your support is essential to CHD’s successful mission.
The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is a man who farms near Moose Jaw and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma five years ago. The farmer contacted Merchant Law Group last September. | File photo
A Moose Jaw, Sask., farmer who was diagnosed with cancer five years ago is leading a class action lawsuit against Bayer and Monsanto.
The lawsuit, filed in Saskatchewan, contends that exposure to Roundup herbicide contributed to his cancer and the cancer of other Canadians participating in the class action.
As well, the suit claims Monsanto, which Bayer acquired in 2018, withheld information about the safety of its herbicide.
Merchant Law Group, a firm best known for the $1.9 billion residential school settlement, has already filed a motion for the class action.
“We have sued in Saskatchewan. We’ve applied to have a judge and we’re ready to go forward with certification (for the class action),” said Tony Merchant, founder of Merchant Law Group, which has six offices in Saskatchewan and 19 across Canada.
“We have people (members of the class action) in Western Canada, particularly, because Roundup is used (there) so commonly, people who have cancer.”
The lead plaintiff in the lawsuit is a man who farms near Moose Jaw and was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma five years ago.
The farmer contacted Merchant Law Group last September.
“He’s a relatively young man. He’s in his 50s,” Merchant said.
“From the early 1990s he (did) custom spraying, and he took safety courses in pesticide use…. In 1997 he began spraying Roundup on pre-seeding to control weeds. He used Roundup a minimum of two times per year.”
Merchant didn’t provide the identity of the lead plaintiff, but his name will likely be released this summer.
“Probably in six weeks or so.”
Bayer Canada, in an email to The Western Producer, said the company is aware of the statement of claim in Saskatchewan and the proposed class action lawsuit related to glyphosate, which is the active ingredient in Roundup.
“As this is a legal action, we’re not able to discuss the details of this matter publicly,” the email said.
“Bayer firmly stands behind the safety of glyphosate-based products. Glyphosate has been extensively studied and the research shows it is not carcinogenic.”
Over the last nine months there’s been three major court decisions in California regarding the safety of Roundup. Most recently, on Monday a California jury awarded US$2 billion to a couple who claimed that Roundup caused their cancer.
In March a San Francisco jury awarded $80 million to another California man who said Roundup caused his cancer. As well, last August a jury ordered Monsanto to pay $289 million to a California groundskeeper who developed non-Hodgkin’s lymphoma.
These California cases are just a few of the thousands of legal actions in America related to the safety of glyphosate.
“(Bayer) faces more than 13,400 U.S. lawsuits over the herbicide’s alleged cancer risk,” Reuters reported Monday.
The potential class action in Saskatchewan and the U.S. lawsuits stem from a 2015 World Health Organization decision.
In March of that year, the International Agency for Research on Cancer, a division of WHO, classified glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.”
Dozens of toxicologists and a number of national regulatory bodies, including Health Canada and the European Food Safety Authority, criticized the IARC decision as biased and flawed. In January, Health Canada issued the results of a scientific study on glyphosate, reviewing its 2017 evaluation of the herbicide’s safety.
Health Canada said its 2017 decision “will stand” — glyphosate is not a risk to human health.
“Our scientists left no stone unturned in conducting this review. They had access to all relevant data and information from federal and provincial governments, international regulatory agencies, published scientific reports and multiple pesticide manufacturers,” the department said in January.
“No pesticide regulatory authority in the world currently considers glyphosate to be a cancer risk to humans at the levels at which humans are currently exposed.”
Health Canada may believe glyphosate is safe, but its stance will not be the final word on this topic.
Lawyers could be litigating its safety in a Moose Jaw or Regina court by next January.
“Early 2020,” Merchant said. “It could be November-December of 2019.”
FRANKFURT (Reuters) – Bayer said on Saturday it did not accept “unethical behavior” following a French investigation into a suspected file assembled by the German company’s seed making unit Monsanto to influence various personalities in France.
The French prosecutor said on Friday it had opened the probe after a complaint was filed by daily newspaper Le Monde.
According to the newspaper and other French media, Monsanto built up a file of some 200 names that includes journalists and lawmakers in the hope of influencing their positions on pesticides.
The file, Le Monde reported, dates from 2016 and was leaked by U.S public relations and marketing agency FleishmanHillard.
In an emailed statement, Bayer declined to comment on the investigation, saying it did not know which documents the allegations referred to.
“We stand for openness and a fair treatment of all interest groups. We do not accept any unethical behavior in our company,” it said. “That applies obviously for the data privacy regulations in the respective countries as well.”
FleishmanHillard said on Friday it would investigate the allegations in Le Monde. The company will “examine the questions raised by certain media outlets about the lists of stakeholders that included publicly available information,” it said in a statement.
Bayer, which acquired Monsanto in a $63 billion deal last year, faces mounting litigations over its weedkiller Roundup, a systemic, broad-spectrum glyphosate-based herbicide.
A U.S. jury in August 2018 found the company liable because Monsanto had not warned users of alleged cancer risks linked to Roundup.
Bayer suffered a similar defeat over the weedkiller last month, while more than 13,000 plaintiffs are claiming damages. The company said last month it intended to defend itself in all lawsuits.
(Reporting by Douglas Busvine in Frankfurt; Editing by Richard Lough and Clelia Oziel)
Are we already back to the “next” Census?! The 4th one since we started?!
Hang on tight to your Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information. The Statistics Act is revised. The Chief Statistician decides which of the personal information demanded is mandatory or voluntary.
There is an international rebellion in support of Assange. His removal from the Ecuadorean Embassy to a London jail may have been a good thing. People once again have access to him. There are many too many reports to post.
It would be fantastic if Canada could get on the right side of this one, stop pandering to the U.S..
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United Nations Torture Official To Visit Julian Assange In Jail (not re-posted on this log)
now that Julian Assange is in prison the analysis in this piece on “freedom of expression” is even more valid. . . .
. . . the catch-all American “freedom of expression” mantra as applied to political systems in countries other than the U.S. This is nothing new, but there is a novel twist.
It is now applied to artistic endeavours (the artist is “expressing” and so has freedom of expression). The campaign targets the sector of the Cuban society dedicated to culture, hoping to win over who those who critically support the new statute in order to create division among individuals involved in culture.
I dunno. Between Assange and Venezuela, it appears that all the world knows how the U.S. functions. And they aren’t willing to stand by any longer.
Social media has helped unspin the propaganda, as fast as the U.S. military manufactured it. It’s looking as though Maduro may have managed to hold onto power. The U.S. and its allies, including Canada, may be thwarted from installing a usurper puppet, Guaido, as President. Which would quite possibly lead to civil war in Venezuela, with Guaido’s forces financed by America and its allies. It’s a recognized pattern.
Logic: I can say “Males who abuse children do life-time harm”. I can say “Fewer females abuse children.” It does not mean that I condone female abuse of children.
Jimmy Carter makes correct statements regarding the U.S. and war, and comparison statements about the Chinese and American economies. Logic: because Carter points out something bad about the U.S. and makes a comparison statement about China, does not mean that he condones everything China does.
I offer one excerpt, but urge you to read the article. Nothing has changed.
“In 1937, TB officials noted that overcrowded homes and poor living conditions on reserves contributed to the high rate of disease among First Nations. In 2009, as many as 18 people are crammed into three-bedroom houses at Lac Brochet.
The community recorded some of the highest TB rates in the world – more than 600 cases per 100,000, more than 100 times what it should be. By comparison, the national rate in Canada is five cases per 100,000. In developing countries such as Bangladesh, the rate is slightly below 400 cases per 100,000. . . .”
Canadians neglect other Canadians at their own peril. Disease organisms travel invisibly. Skerritt’s article reveals that we are kept largely in the dark. My experience (2005) with the disease (educated middle class urban white privileged, living a healthy life style) reinforces what Skerritt documents. The disease is not contained “in the North”, far from it.
We have a dysfunctional Health Canada; if they were doing their job, your guest would not have been on the radio.
We are a population that suffers from ignorance; we do not understand that we are an inextricable part of a larger whole. My experience is ample evidence: it is worth the while of all of us to pitch in and help as we may.
I read back in 2005 that 30% of the population walks around with the TB organism; I think it’s like the HIV organism. You can carry it all your life, your immune system if healthy, will hold it in check. It’s why societies have learned to be careful with dead bodies. The immune system is gone, organisms like tuberculosis can multiply in wild abandon in the fertile fields of the corpse.
Our malaise will not be cured by more drugs. The evidence is clear. I am old enough to remember the Tuberculosis van that came to every distant community in Saskatchewan (maybe not First Nations communities?). It was pre-emptive action to identify, isolate and care for the community and its members. My grandmother-in-law when a young Mother, lived for 2 years in a TB sanitorium, recovered and lived robustly to age 84. Tuberculosis “disappeared”, hence my disbelief when I was told I had TB, not yet contagious.
There is NO NEED to become afraid to breathe the air because we might contract TB . . . IF we would just get to work helping to look after fellow Canadians. The Government has known for 100 years about TB in First Nations communities. Big Pharma is influential in Health Canada and in our Universities. They “care” about profits. Our faith is misplaced if we think “things will change” under the current regime. . . . 100 years, give me a break.
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For my own record:
From: Skerritt, Jen Sent: February 21, 2012 To: Sandra Finley Subject: RE: TB
Hi Sandra,
Thanks for your note. I haven’t covered health for more than a year, but I can tell you that the series prompted parliamentary hearings on TB, and the federal government pledged to create a new action plan on TB.
I just pulled up the latest TB stats (from Nov. 2011) and there were more than 100 reported cases in Manitoba between January and November last year.
I hope this helps answer your question !
Jen
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From: Sandra Finley Sent: Sat 2/18/2012 To: Skerritt, Jen Subject: RE: TB
Hello Jen Skerritt,
I believe I congratulated you back in 2009 when your series of articles on TB ran in the Wpg Free Press.
What was the outcome? Did things get better?
A village in Guatemala might have TB in its midst. I was asked for my input.
I included postings of 3 of your articles because they make the case so well. See appended.
Many thanks,
Sandra Finley
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APPENDED
Hi Pam,
IMPORTANT: I am not a medical doctor. Most allopathic doctors will disagree with me. I am providing to you my own personal experience. No doctor can argue with that.
I worked as a member of a 3-person team with the head of TB Control and with a naturpathic doctor.
ALSO IMPORTANT: my case was diagnosed early in its development, before it became contagious.
Basicly:
Dealt with things that, unbeknownst to me, were weakening my immune system.
Took/did things to boost my immune system.
A quick message on “the cure”:
– The community should not let itself get afraid and panicked. Fear is a great stressor that will weaken their ability to regain health. Everyone in their community will be healthier if they deal with this together.
FROM MY POINT-OF-VIEW, your friend is on the right path (resistant organisms). But the non-drug approach is not straight-forward and not without pitfalls.
The community has alternatives:
Use the drug protocols
Be mindful of resistant organisms which means trying some non-drug approaches with some people
Other ideas they may figure out themselves
In order for a non-drug approach to work – if it can work – – there has to be a buy-in from the community – – for example, people need to agree to be quarantined if their case is contagious.
If the community chooses a non-drug approach, they should know why they are NOT choosing the drug approach.
I would recommend that, as a first step, the community discuss the drug approach in detail – what they know. Add to it the following, what I know, and other sources of info.
The second step would be to consider the non-drug approach – – what they already know, coupled with what has worked for others.
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I had an active case of TB, diagnosed before it became contagious. The old doctor who was head of TB Control in Saskatchewan at the time was agreeable (gave his encouragement) to trying a non-drug approach because the TB wasn’t yet contagious. We had time. If it didn’t work, I could still go on the drugs.
I was motivated to experiment, and as I discussed with the doctor :
For the reason you cite (development of resistant organisms) the drug approach to TB is not the best approach, the way I see things. Nature’s organisms will always evolve so as to survive the current poison we use to kill them. That is exactly what is happening – – the community you refer to in Guatemala is experiencing it.
This posting includes a list of countries where drug-resistant TB has evolved. (By 2005)
The problem is that new drugs, in order to combat the disease have to become more and more toxic, parallel with the more virulent organism. We arrive at a point where “the cure” is temporary AND toxic to the point that it does great harm to the human patient, too.
Neither do I think it is rational to develop more and more expensive drugs, when the people afflicted by the disease are largely people with compromised immune systems BECAUSE OF poverty. As the Canadian example illustrates so well – – tuberculosis has been an identified and serious problem in First Nations communities for more than a hundred years. Alarms re-surface periodically through the years. NOTHING changes, except that the risk for everyone increases.
People are foolish if they think the disease can be contained within distant communities, in local shelters for the homeless, addiction treatment centres, and hospitals. Which is, in fact, where TB is growing in Canada. But we prefer “hush”, to dealing effectively with the disease, which means dealing with racism and poverty.
It assumes that we are incapable of developing some other way to combat the organism.
The TB programme does not serve the patient because the drugs do not address what is at the root of the health problem. The drugs might provide a fix. But in time, whatever is underlying (causing weakened immunity) is likely to manifest in some other form of ill health. There is a good chance that the TB patient will have continuing health problems and a reduced life span.
Keep in mind that a significant percentage (30% is the number I’ve seen) of people walk around with the TB organism; it is not a problem for them because their immune system keeps it in check. Our insides are full of little creatures, some good, some not-so-good.
As mentioned, I worked as a team with an allopathic doctor, head of TB Control (regular check-ups) and a naturpathic doctor.
My case of TB demonstrates: if we neglect poverty (where TB resides) we do it at our own peril. TB is on the rise, it will spread to the not-poor.
Also, the drug-company efforts to find the “next cure” are immoral. They use people in 3rd world countries to test their new concoctions. The Government of Nigeria brought criminal charges against Pfizer for killing Nigerians who were used for drug testing. The case was settled out-of-court.
Here is the information I have circulated (as of 2009) regarding tuberculosis.
http://sandrafinley.ca/?p=1105. 2009-11-19 H1N1 (or nukes or gmo’s or energy) in the context of “Selling Out”: the larger issue. Immune systems. TB. Constant Gardener.
(For the last posting, see item #5. Also #6, the Nigerian case. It includes reference to the book/movie “The Constant Gardener” which is all about Big Pharma’s interest in tuberculosis.)
THE QUESTION ?
The approach used was: why didn’t my immune system deal with the TB organism? (many healthy people carry the organism, it doesn’t become active)
/Sandra
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From: Pamela Sent: February-13-12 To: Sandra Finley Subject: TB
Hi Sandra;
. . . A friend of mine is working with people in Guatemala and they are experiencing possibly an outbreak of Tuberculosis. I thought that you told me that you had TB once in your lungs and had treated it herbally? If so, can you tell me what you used? My friend would be very interested in this, as sometimes the people don’t use the medication properly and then the disease is drug resistant.
NOTE, Sept 2024 for Newcomers, re federal Anil Arora (not a Canadian in any sense):
Connections:
Anil AroraSTATSCAN (equivalent of American Census Bureau,which not even Congressmen know is run by Lockheed Martin >>> <<< Lockheed Martin Corp Military and SURVEILLANCE.
Anil Arora at HEALTH CANADA >>> <<< Lockheed Martin Corp administers the health data base for the Canadian Military . . . read on. I can’t integrate all this for you.
The administrative state is a term used to describe the power that some government agencies have to write, judge, and enforce their own laws.
Anil Arora has come up through the Federal Bureaucracy (Cdn). He has had a couple stints at StatsCan
Lockheed Martin’s intended role at StatsCan (2000’s) was curtailed by Canadians spreading the word, resulting in huge and growing non-compliance with Censuses (2006, 2011, 2016, 2021 ) and Surveys (on-going building of files on individual Canadians, in-between censuses).
Lockheed Martin (war, technology, and surveillance) was left with back-door entry to the comprehensive data base on Canadians.
Lockheed provides “steerage” for the census operations (data banks) – – in the FVEY countries at a minimum.
Head officials at StatsCan work with, under “the steerage” of Lockheed Martin
Arora has been at Health Canada, Natural Resources Canada, and in Science and Policy Integration.
He was chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities – – the voluntary, executive-level entity of worldwide medicines regulatory authorities set up to provide strategic coordination, advocacy and leadership. (Think of the assault on Supplements.)
It’s pretty well understood that the American Regulatory Authorities of Medicines are run by Big Pharma. My documented experience leads to the same conclusion regarding the situation in Canada.
I’d dearly love to hear your take on the 2019, just out, Census ‘Test’. Again, another mandatory (or is it?) survey… or rather ‘test’ (?) A precursor to the yet to come 2021 all citizen Census. An attempt to see just how far they can push the types of questions they ask. This time they take aim at our gender, our sex, our religious beliefs, our mental state and yes, just for fun… our need for repairs required to our homes (You’ll have to ask them). All of which, in my simple mind combined or in part, amount to a lot of NONE OF THEIR DAMN BUSINESS!! I absolutely fail to see how any of that information can be useful in any capacity to accomplish that which they state in their opening paragraph on the Census Test itself. If you thought the 2016 Census was a hit to our freedoms under the charter then you have got to see this one. Absolute, pure, unadulterated voyeurism.
Sandra speaking:
NOTE 1: you may have missed this posting. It contains the link to the Globe&Mail article about StatsCan’s plan to demand the banking records of 500,000 Canadians. As far as I know, outrage dissuaded them!
NOTE 2:The Census ‘Test’, Chris’ question. It’s new to me – – thanks to Chris for drawing it to attention, and providing the information:
Hi Sandra, I’ve included a couple of links to view.
Besides the questions on this ‘test’ being what I consider irrelevant to any government function they are highly personal and can not legally be asked by anyone else (e.g. employers, etc…) such as what sex I was at birth, my gender now, my religion, how much I think my home is worth if I sold today and what sort of repairs it currently needs, how many sick days I took off of work during a specified period and if I was paid for that time, my parents birth places (what if I don’t know?).
I’m horrified. I really don’t want to answer anything on this ‘test’. According to the second link provided below, they are calling this a survey. Surveys, as I understand it, are not MANDATORY. Yet I’m being told both by them by phone and on the first link provided – that this IS indeed a mandatory ‘test’.
I also call into question their selection process for the 250,000 homes they targeted (excellent choice of wording here because that’s exactly how I feel) as I ALWAYS get any so called random sampling test, survey, etc… that they come up with. Add to this that I always get any long form (1 of 4 homes) as well. I have not done anything with this test yet. Not sure what I will do at the moment.
Thanks for giving me a place to go where someone is actually listening to my concerns, Chris
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MY TAKE
UPDATE Sept 2024):
A quick look at “the test” – – does it say that “the test” is not mandatory, but it IS mandatory if you receive the “invitation” to supply the requested information? I invite interpretation by others.
The second URL contains a link to the Statistics Act. Section 7, copied below. Look at the bold, highlighted “Marginal note:”. Looks like the Chief Statistician became God. I wonder how God liked it when even the Banks said “no” to the demand for the banking records of 500,000 people?
Chris – – in spite of the “Marginal note”, you still have a Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information. A bureaucrat does not have the power to take that away. Constitutional Law requires that the Government apply to the Courts, present arguments to satisfy the criteria set out in the Oakes Test, and get a Court Ruling that says “We agree, StatsCan needs to have an over-ride of the Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information. If you don’t answer the questions, you will be prosecuted.” StatsCan cannot take away the Charter Right of citizens, not without a Court Ruling.
The Statistics Act, Section 7:
Rules, instructions and requests for information
7(1) The Chief Statistician may prescribe the rules, instructions and, subject to subsection 21(1), requests for information that he or she considers necessary for conducting the work and business of Statistics Canada, the collecting, compiling and publishing of statistics and other information and the taking of any census authorized by this Act.
Marginal note:Clarification
(2) For greater certainty, any rule, instruction or request for information prescribed under subsection (1) is not a regulation for the purposes of the Statutory Instruments Act.
Marginal note: Mandatory or voluntary requests for information
8(1) The Chief Statistician (God) shall determine whether a request for information is mandatory or voluntary, with the exception of the census of population and census of agriculture, both of which are mandatory.
The following integrates a larger picture that I think is important to see. Follow one high-level bureaucrat, Anil Arora. He moves from one Government Agency or Department to another – – implementing an agenda. The agenda is international and corporate. Arora is one of the quislings.
– – – – – –
You reminded me, good grief! . . . the “next Census” already peeps over the horizon. It will be the FOURTH one since the beginning of our efforts. I doubt that any one of us foresaw the longterm need for attention. At the beginning we understood very little of what we know now. We tackled the Government because it was not hard to understand, intuitively, that StatsCan was intent on taking us down a very dark road (discussed elsewhere on this blog).
Also unforeseen, the greatest amount of work has arisen from what StatsCan does IN BETWEEN censuses, the surveys.
Two important contribution we’ve been able to deliver to Canadians:
solid documentation of the lies told by StatsCan.
The vulnerability of our Charter Right to Privacy of Personal Information. Citizens are the only ones who will fight to defend it. It is not in the interests of (Lockheed Martin Corp) the military-industrial-government-surveillance economy, for Canadians to have, to OWN, the Charter Right to Privacy.
The second point (Charter Right) is addressed comprehensively in other postings.
I’ll elaborate on the first point, documentation of the lies and half-truths, and where that takes us.
The Nazis were masters of using lies to reassure people. And they were masters of the Census as a tool of the terrorist state, ultimately for the extermination of millions of people. (Ref: Edwin Black’s IBM and the Holocaust – – a very important and interesting record.).
I am also reminded – – “By Chance Alone, A Remarkable True Story of Courage and Survival at Auschwitz by Canadian Max Eisen, 2016.
Max was a 15-year old at Auschwitz. His description makes real the use of the lies, the role they play in the persuasion that reduces your wariness during the period when the subjugation is beginning. During that time, the tyranny cannot risk a rebellion – – there are too many of you, they can be overthrown. The lies disarm rebellion, long enough for the tyrants to reduce people to the point where their power to resist is obliterated.
As mentioned, Anil Arora was the StatsCan witness at my trial. And I had a 45-minute telephone conversation with him at the time of the 2006 census-taking. He had phoned to persuade me to fill in my census form. I found his responses to my serious concerns lacking in substance. He was a facile parrot for StatsCan and Lockheed Martin Corp, unable to hear or process what I was saying. Ha ha! He’s now (2024) a Harvard University Professor. (I still have the recording of the conversation.)
The following may seem off-topic. To me, it is important to see Arora in the larger context, to understand better the operation of our Government.
Arora came from Health Canada to StatsCan where he performed under a couple of titles, including at one time “Director General” of StatsCan. I first came across his name in Shiv Chopra’s “Health Canada, Rotten to the Core”. Arora is a bureaucrat, not a long-trained statistician with long experience, as former heads of StatsCan had been. He disappeared from StatsCan for a time after my trial. And reappeared again, later, at StatsCan. He did a stint in Natural Resources Canada, and in Science and Policy Integration. I won’t comment on those assignments.
Arora is now back at Health Canada. And I’m holding in my hand a brochure that calls on Canadians to fight back against what his sub-section of Health Canada is doing. “These bureaucrats need to hear from you”. The first one listed is Anil Arora. According to NHPPA (Natural Health Products Protection Assoc), Health Canada will move natural supplements to fall under the same regulations as chemical drugs, after the Federal Election in October (2019).
I phoned NHPPA: why is Anil Arora listed on the brochure?
A well-informed woman referred me to their website and a specific document. In short, the NHPPA has every reason to be challenging Health Canada on process, in my opinion. (Just as StatsCan was challenged on their outrageous attempt to demand the banking data on 500,000 Canadians from the banks.)
Arora’s online Government bio is glowing. The reason Arora is currently at Health Canada – – – leading a complex organization overseeing regulation of food, drug and health products for Canada – – –
might be explained by the last sentence from his “government/management” bio: He also served as chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities.
In 2010, Mr. Arora joined Natural Resources Canada as Assistant Deputy Minister of the Minerals and Metals Sector, and in 2013 was appointed Assistant Deputy Minister of Science and Policy Integration. He moved to Health Canada in 2014, becoming Assistant Deputy Minister of Health Products and Food Branch and leading a complex organization overseeing regulation of food, drug and health products for Canada. He also served as chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities.
RE: He also served as chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (source URLs are appended)
It’s pretty well understood that the American Regulatory Authorities of Medicines are run by Big Pharma. My documented experience leads to the same conclusion regarding the situation in Canada.
Arora chaired this (from the website):
voluntary, executive-level entity of worldwide medicines regulatory authorities set up to provide strategic coordination, advocacy and leadership . . .
Website designed by Swissmedic and maintained by the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency
The website design credits are the names of Government Regulatory Agencies in Switzerland and Japan, respectively.
I have no idea of their relationship with Big Pharma, whether they are bona fide regulators or not. All I know is that Switzerland is where Cameco – Bruce Power (uranium-nuclear vertically-integrated) set up a storefront shop to avoid paying taxes in Canada, literally BILLIONS of dollars in Canadian taxes.)
My direct experience of Health Canada is with the PMRA (Pest Management Regulatory Agency). I didn’t find it surprising to see “Rotten to the Core” in a book title. I went to Ottawa years ago to meet with the then-head of the PMRA (Karen Dodds) and her second-in-command, Connie Moase, because I wanted to hear answers to my questions about the regulation of ag chemicals (pesticides) from the horse’s mouth. I was appalled by their responses and remain so. The public interest in health was not to be found. Health Canada’s PMRA is run by and for corporate interests. It’s why Canada continues to stonewall in the face of overwhelming evidence of the great harm being done by ag-chemicals for example. The forecasted extinctions of insects and songbirds does not phase them, let alone the disease levels in humans, kids, and animals.
I think the evidence is clear: it is not only the American Medicine Regulatory Authorities that are run by Corporations, the Canadian ones are, too. Anil Arora was chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities.
StatsCan? Member of an international organization to harmonize census operations in various countries, under the steerage of Lockheed Martin Corp. A revised Statistics Act gives the Chief Statistician the power to decide whether we will be prosecuted for personal information we fail to supply, if it is demanded. Charter Right? . . . Resist, Do Not Comply.
International Trade Deals with “Chapter 13” secret Tribunals to decide how much we are going to pay to satisfy corporate complaints that Canadian laws prevented them from making the money they claim they can make in Canada?
Seems pretty clear. Our own Laws are subservient. There are people in Government whose job it is to (Anil Arora at Health Canada) -manage a complex organization overseeing regulation of food, drug and health products for Canada.
He was not working on behalf of citizens at StatsCan. Charter Rights be damned. Revise the Statistics Act to ensure power and control is in the hands of the Chief Statistician. Under “the steerage” of Lockheed Martin Corporation.
Chair of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities? And what’s happening now under his management at Health Canada? Dump what took years to accomplish in Canada. In whose favour?
Back to my experience: you may imagine that I lent an ear and gratitude to Shiv Chopra, one of three Health Canada whistle-blowers in the case of attempted bribery by Monsanto to get Bovine Growth Hormone registered in Canada. I also happened to meet one of his fellow whistleblowers at a “Prevent Cancer NOW” workshop in Ottawa, Michelle Brill-Edwards. These are fine people who work in the public interest (Shiv is now deceased).
But Health Canada – – actually the corporations they serve – – will not countenance those who dare to challenge and expose. The attack campaigns against whistle-blowing scientists in Canada and in the U.S. has been worthy of a police state. (Documented elsewhere on this blog.)
Elected Members-of-Parliament and Provincial Legislative Assemblies, working with the Canadian Senate are not “the Government”, in a number of cases. As the documentation vis-à-vis StatsCan and the PMRA illustrates, lies and vague information are a large factor in the manipulation of the Canadian public. Documentation regarding the petro-chemical industry shows the same reality.
Lies, half-truths, propaganda, vagueness, reassurances from the Government produce gullible people. Easy prey.
Thank-you Chris, for connecting with us. I hope “My Take” is a useful contribution to
decisions we need to make
about actions we will take.
Yes, some of us should focus on StatsCan. By doing so, we are in solidarity with, and supporting the work being done by other Canadians vis-a-vis other manifestations of the same problem in the Government that is no longer our Government.
P.S. I am having a good chuckle at StatsCan’s communications strategy for “the test” census. You receive “an invitation” to participate. I am reminded of the very funny phrase they came up with to describe the money they make from selling data – – it’s “respendable revenue“. Hilarious!
= = = = = = = = = = = = =
APPENDED
SOURCE URL’s for THE MEDICINES REGULATORY AUTHORITIES
The European Medicines Agency (EMA) is a member of the International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA). ICMRA is a voluntary, executive-level entity of worldwide medicines regulatory authorities set up to provide strategic coordination, advocacy and leadership. Nov 20, 2014
The International Coalition of Medicines Regulatory Authorities (ICMRA) is a voluntary, executive-level, strategic coordinating, advocacy and leadership entity of regulatory authorities that work together to . . . (etc. down to)
Website designed by Swissmedic and maintained by the Pharmaceuticals and Medical Devices Agency
In 2016 Murray Edwards tripped off to London, UK because he isn’t going to pay all those taxes in Canada!
Real fine guy to have as a role model for students of commerce. And there’s more to it than that.
The “mapping” below is limited to the U of Saskatchewan. Nothing about the U of Alberta that probably also has a “Murray Edwards” imprint and perhaps a “McCreath” presence. Nor did I look into possible CNRL + Edwards at the PTRC (Petroleum Technology Research Centre at the U of Regina). No sense getting TOO buried in the mire!
= = = = = = = =
THE MAPPING
Sent: April 27, 2019 Subject: RE: New U of S Chancellor Grit McCreath
In case you want to go further down the rabbit hole:
Please alert me to any inaccuracies:
So we have:
GRIT McCreath, new Chancellor; former member of Board of Governors; and member of Senate before that.
Grit’s husband, Scott McCreath, is the “Executive in Residence” at the Edwards School of Business, U of Saskatchewan.
Murray Edwards, Edwards School of Business benefactor, is likely a friend of the McCreaths. They are all originally from Sask, of the same era, and graduates of Sask educational institutions. They are long term residents of Calgary.
Continuing with Scott McCreath:
(INSERT: I wonder what “and is involved with Waskesiu” means? Anything to do with The U of S (I don’t know current status) Art School at Emma Lake – – prime real estate that during “cuts” the University closed down?)
Biography
Scott McCreath and his BMO Nesbitt Burns group manage $1.2 billion of private client wealth. He was Senior Vice President of Canadian Commercial Bank, and was Chairman of the Alberta Stock Exchange. He is a 17-time recipient of the Deane Nesbitt/Charles Burns Award, and in 2011 received the Brendan Wood TopGun designation as one of the world’s best financial services professionals. He is active in community philanthropy, sits on the Dean’s Advisory Council (U of S, Edwards School of Business), and is involved with Waskesiu. He is an alumnus of our College of Commerce (now the Edwards School . ..).
Scott has a great history of giving generously of his time and contacts to the University of Saskatchewan, and his wife Grit (an alumnus of the College of Education) is a member of the University’s Board of Governors. Scott has been a fantastic supporter of the Dembroski Student-Managed Portfolio, and sits on its governance committee.
Scott will be able to speak with great insight on the behavior of markets and of investors, the institutions of finance and public policy, and the keys to successful management of other people’s assets. He is deeply committed to the success of the Edwards School of Business and wants his participation with us to add value to the School and enrich the lives of students.
A few notes re Murray Edwards, oil tycoon billionaire benefactor of the School of Business. (He moved to London (tax advantages) but retains his Canadian citizenship. He is Mr. Canadian Natural Resources. Tar sands, oil pipelines AND Imperial Metals. Well-known and abhorred in BC because of Mt Polley – – more on that below. I don’t know how well-known is his funding (is that the right word?) of the Christy Clark Liberals.
RE Scott McCreath and “his BMO Nesbitt Burns group”, and son James:
No longer is it illegal for Canadian Banks to also offer investment and other services to their clients.
BMO Wealth Management is BMO Nesbitt Burns. (BMO took over once-independent investment company Nesbitt Burns. )
under the Bank of Montreal logo, on the BMO Nesbitt Burns webpage, under James McCreath is The McCreath Group. Father and son are both part of that.
No longer is it illegal for Banks to also be Management Consultants. Murray Edwards is the big guy behind Imperial Metals, as mentioned. Dec 2018 Imperial Metals hired the Bank of Montreal re re-structuring. (https://ca.reuters.com/article/businessNews/idCAKBN1OD1TZ-OCABS).
Imperial Metal’s Mt Polley mine disaster in BC (2014) is an on-going, large, unresolved tragedy. A wall of the large tailings pond broke, emptying into a creek that flows into Quesnel Lake.
The controlling shareholder of Imperial Metals is billionaire N. Murray Edwards. He donated half a million dollars in campaign contributions to the B.C. Liberal party since 2005 and helped organize a $1-million fundraiser for B.C. Premier Christy Clark’s re-election.[23]
Further re the McCreaths’ son, Andy (married to Grant Devine’s daughter)
(Grant Devine former Conservative premier of Sask. Most corrupt administration in the history of the Province. People went to jail. Devine who was appointed to the U of S Bof G by Brad Wall before he stepped down as Premier. Wall had worked for cabinet ministers in the Devine Government.).
tinePublic Inc. is Andy McCreath. I have not looked at it recently; it may be of the corporate “integration” of the U.S. and Canada. When I was looking into WHO were the rich guys in Canada that were raising millions upon millions for the Clinton Foundation:
. . . the fund-raising done by the Clinton’s in Canada.
At the bottom of the article: the speeches they gave, who sponsored the speeches, and at what price.
tinePublic Inc., Andy McCreath, the very bottom URL. Not that there is necessarily anything sinister – – it sounds like the McCreath kid is a hustler. (His mother, Grit, is on the Board of Governors, U of S.)
A quick approximate count – – 9 of the Clinton speeches in Canada are courtesy of tinePublic or McCreath Communications ( e.g. Hillary, in Saskatoon, Jan. 21, 2015, fee $202,500)
Also (the bottom of the article.)
The Power Within Inc. hosted the lion’s share of the Clinton events – – I think about 24. And consistently paid more than anyone else by a long shot, to Bill Clinton: US$525,000 in June 2008 being the most. $350,000 another time, $300,000
According to the article, “… The Power Within is sponsored” by the TD Bank.
TD deputy chairman, mentioned in the article, is Frank McKenna, (former Premier of N.B. – for 10 years) who was Canada’s ambassador to Washington (but only for a year) when George W. Bush was president
I wonder from where The Power gets its money. And how Frank McKenna came by his. He came from humble beginnings.
I dumped material into the posting “The Petro-State“.
There ‘s a video that points out the vulnerability of some Canadian banks – – they are HUGELY “invested” (through loans) to the Oil and Gas sector in Alberta. TD has the largest exposure. BMO is alongside. (Murray Edwards (CNRL), Scott McCreath (BMO)?
Young and amazing people – – I can’t think of anyone in my generation who would be able to do what Natalie Wynn is doing.
Viewer discretion advised! You, Mom will be offended by the language.
With thanks to erich who writes:
Interesting and powerful ally. With a total of over 22 million views and half to two million viewers per new video Natalie Wynn is one of the very few progressive voices that is really heard in the internet jungle.
note her video on climate that this article uses as an example. The amount and quality of information imparted while keeping attention with bits of Pythonesque burlesque really impresses me. IMHO she gets more across, more effectively than Al Gore. In a home-made 34 minute video.
I had found “incels” (“involuntary celebates”) a source of despair. How ever could we as a society hope to deal with such destructive distortions? And how sad that people, the sons of mothers and dads, grandsons, communities, can come to these states-of-mind?
The universe sends us angels, to the rescue. Wynn is one of them. Bless her. Her courage is something else – – I can only imagine a bit of the pain she must have experienced in her short 30-year lifetime, from a few statements she offers to the incels.
It is remarkable that she even cares about the incels. Your description,
There is real understanding here, even compassion, for some of the most pathetically hateful of our society’s jetsam
reminds me of prophets, dare I say, at risk of being crucified?!
You sent me hope. As you point out – – a powerful ally. /S
Assange Formally Denies Court His Consent for Extradition to US
Julian Assange’s supporters protest outside of Westminster Magistrates Court in London, Britain May 2, 2019. | Photo: Reuters
The U.S. accuses the Australian journalist of “conspiracy to infiltrate” cyber systems with the objective of accessing classified data.
The WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange formally denied before the Westminster Court of Magistrates in London his “consent” to an extradition request made by the United States, a country that wants to try the journalist over publishing leaks about its war crimes, corruption and human rights in Afghanistan and Iraq.
“I do not wish to surrender for extradition. I’m a journalist winning many, many awards and protecting many people,” said Assange who testified by video conference on Thursday from the Belmarsh maximum security prison, where he is imprisoned after having been condemned by another British court to 50 weeks of jail for violating his conditional freedom in 2012.
The U.S. asked London to surrender Assange, whom it accuses of “conspiracy to infiltrate” cyber systems with the objective of accessing classified data, a charge which could carry a sentence of up to five years in prison. On this regard, Ben Brandon, a lawyer representing the U.S. government, said to the Westminster Court that there is evidence of Assange’s acquiring confidential records.
Once the audience with the Westminster Magistrates finished, however, Julian Assange’s lawyer, Jennifer Robinson, alerted media about the real nature of the legal actions against her client.
“Julian Assange, 47 y.o, fears of having to face more serious charges in the U.S. than hacking.”
“Despite what you heard from the prosecutor in the courtroom today, this case is not about hacking,” Robinson said and explained that the case is about “a journalist and a publisher who had conversations with a source about accessing material, encouraged that source to provide material and spoke to that source about how to protect their identity. This is a protected activity that journalists engage in all the time.”
In addition, during a press conference outside the British court, WikiLeaks chief editor Kristinn Hrafnsson told journalists that Assange has spent 23 hours a day in his cell lately, which means he is going through “solitary” confinement.
“That’s unacceptable and that applies to most of the prisoners in that appalling facility. It is unacceptable that a publisher is spending time in that prison,” Hrafnsson denounced and stressed that “the fight has just begun, it will be a long one and a hard one, but we count on the general public to understand the importance of this case and we will fight until victory.”
Judge Michael Snow’s ruled that the current extradition case would be adjourned until May 30 for a procedural hearing. Later a new, more substantial hearing will be held on June 12.
The U.S. persecution of Julian Assange was launched under former President Barack Obama and aggressively pursued by President Donald Trump administration.
The Australian journalist has been accused of having conspired with former U.S. Army intelligence analyst Chelsea Manning to intercept a Pentagon computer. The prosecution maintains that Assange helped Manning decode a secret code so that the analyst could filter classified cables through WikiLeaks.
After Ecuador’s President Lenin Moreno withdrew the journalist’s diplomatic asylum, Assange was forcibly detained by British agents on April 11 at the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he had stayed as a refugee since 2012.
The government of former President Rafael Correa protected the WikiLeaks journalist from being arrested and sent to Sweden to be interrogated for sexual abuse crimes there which he had repeatedly denied.